What are Tati Tuesdays? Tati Tuesdays are a weekly feature that highlights Things Around the Interwebs that I’ve found this week and want to share. They’re a way to keep me engaged with you, the reader, without feeling the pressure to comment extensively and intelligently on every article I want to bring to your attention. In addition to the acronym, they’re called “tati” because I tend to drink tea in the mornings while I surf the web. Hence, “ta for the tea!” shortened to tati.

File it under…

Gay – Very, Very Gay

Just discovered the Savage Love Podcast. If you like reading Savage’s column, you have to check out his podcast. He has a great radio voice and is just hillarious in his answers to people’s questions about sex, sexuality, and relationships. Where else can you hear someone say “what, did a pussy fall on his head?”

I was excited about this but didn’t expect it to pass. An anti-bullying bill focusing on sexual orientation-based school violence, among other things, passed the General Assembly by one vote. As someone who lived in fear and anxiety as a queer kid in North Carolina, I’m thrilled to hear about this.

I’ve been using the Livemocha community for language learning, which is wonderful and I can’t believe I never knew about it before, but I noticed one annoying thing. The pictures for young/old and fat/thin are all women, and the pictures for rich/poor and tall/short are men. Coincidence? Methinks not.

I recently read Ariel Levy’s fabulous Female Chauvinist Pigs for the first time, and highly recommend it. One point that really stuck out for me is that women often subtly put down other women for not dressing in a sexy, revealing manner and in doing so cite lack of self-confidence. Some women who show a lot of skin for whatever reason feel that this not only makes them feel confident or is a product of their confidence, but that others who don’t dress the same way must not be confident, or must be disparaging of their looks. I have no problem with women feeling sexy when they put on a short skirt or a low-cut top, but I do think something’s going on when a woman’s assumption is that this is the only way to show self-confidence. Levy does a great job at pointing out how this kind of argument can be used to draw women towards everything from Girls Gone Wild cameos to unwanted sexual experiences.

Surely, women can hide behind baggy or “unattractive” clothing. I did that a lot as a kid and as a teenager, and in fact I was not self confident. One of the ways I showed my self-confidence and comfort with boys, in turn, was to start dressing “sexier,” to start showing off my breasts and legs. But I eventually found that for me, that clothing actually didn’t really make me feel sexy. It did in a way, but at the same time I was often self-conscious, because I kept having to tug at a strapless bra or make sure my skirt was covering my rear. Those clothes required a lot of effort, and they weren’t comfortable. Now the clothes that make me feel sexy vary – one of my “sexier” outfits is a pair of cargo pants and a very butch black muscle top, while another is a thin v-neck yellow and brown artsy tank with wide straps and a pair of stretchy black gaucho pants. I feel sexy when I’m put together, when my clothes fit well and feel good, and I’m smiling. Sure, other girls may feel the same in clothes that made me uncomfortable, but if anyone pities me and tells me that I need to get some self confidence and dress the part, I’ll laugh. I invite you to join me.

I was just listening to a Savage Love podcast where a girl has a question about this guy who won’t have oral sex with her, and keeps insisting that she should be upset, and Dan pointed out that he’s terrorizing her by backing her into a corner so that she says “I’m not going to break up with you, I’m not going to break up with you” so many times that it ends up that she feels like she can’t break up with him. I realized that it sounded very familiar, though in a slightly different context. So lesson of the day: if you’re in a relationship with someone, guy or girl, doesn’t matter, and that person is insecure and you keep having to tell them “no you’re great in bed, you really are, no I don’t *need* to have orgasms,” etc. etc. blah blah blah, keep in mind that eventually you’re going to find yourself backed into a corner. So DTMFA.

What are Tati Tuesdays? Tati Tuesdays are a weekly feature that highlights Things Around the Interwebs that I’ve found this week and want to share. They’re a way to keep me engaged with you, the reader, without feeling the pressure to comment extensively and intelligently on every article I want to bring to your attention. In addition to the acronym, they’re called “tati” because I tend to drink tea in the mornings while I surf the web. Hence, “ta for the tea!” shortened to tati.
File it under…

Gay – Very, Very Gay

This year’s Lamdba Literary Awards winners were announced. I’m not familiar with many of them, so perhaps some books to add to the reading list.

Looks like Hillary was heavily involved in this week’s (some) federal benefits for same-sex partners of federal employees EO.

The 100 hottest butch, masculine, androgynous, genderqueer, transmasculine, studs, AGs, dykes, queers, and transguys, including such gems as Kay Ryan, Rachel Maddow, Andrea Gibson, and Feministing’s Miriam. It’s a fabulous list. I may not be super into butchy women, but softbutch/andro? Yeah, I’m all over it.

Again from Slate, this update of “Barack Obama’s News Feed” has a laugh-out-loud funny comment thread below “Osama Bin Laden posted a video response to Speech in the Muslim World.” Osama: *Arab characters*. Robert Gates: ? Dan Choi: “FML.” Robert Gates: Well done, homosexual. Dan Choi: So can I have my job back? Robert Gates: Negative.

Diggnation filmed over at MSNBC studios this week, with Rachel Maddow serving up a delicious-looking morning cocktail called a Sucette. It includes Lillet, my favourite Bordeaux drink, and I really wish she’d share the recipe.

Over at Historiann, an interesting discussion on the drawbacks of complete-it-quick PhD programs.

John Hodgman on jocks vs. nerds at the “other” nerd prom (correspondant’s dinner). You have to love that he names the three types of hobbits, and that Obama gives the vulcan salute.

Nifty Gadgets

The TweetDeck desktop Twitter/Facebook tool, available for Mac and Windows, brought me back to Twitter after slowly languishing on Twhirl. Find me @peachy_penumbra and tell me what interesting tweeters I should add to my follow list.

Reproductive Rights

Jon Stewart goes head to head with Mike Huckabee on abortion rights. Not as good as their gay marriage debate, but still worth watching.

Sexual Violence Discourse

As usual, Cara clues us in on the latest rage-inducing treatment of rape by an official entity. This time, it’s the use of “rape champions” by UK police officers to… prevent rape?

Wasting Time

I got stuck with a cold this weekend, so I spent a lot of time on Hulu. I watched everything from the Bachlerotte and Hell’s Kitchen to early Buffy episodes, a preview of the new show NYC prep, and the new cartoon about liberal elitists, The Goodes.